At first there was the joint declaration by the Russian Ministry of Culture and Central Partnership, a movie rental company from Russia, which stated the following: “Central Partnership withdraws the application for the theatrical distribution certificate of the film Child 44, accepting any commercial impact which may follow this decision.
“Child 44 (Number 44 in Russian localization) by Lionsgate Production Company is due to have the world premiere on April 17. The release for Russian theaters was planned for the same day.
“However, after the press review the Russian Ministry of Culture has received many questions regarding the film content, the first concern being the distortion of historical facts and some original interpretation of the events of the Great Patriotic War, as well as of the images and characters of Soviet citizens of that time.
“On April 14 the expert council, composed of the representatives of the Ministry of Culture, Central Partnership and the press, reviewed the film’s final edit.
“As the result of this review, the movie distributors and the Ministry of Culture officials came to a unified opinion: the theatrical release of such a movie on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the war is unacceptable,” the statement concludes.
The film is a crime thriller, which is based on the novel by British writer Tom Rob Smith.
The events of the movie take place in the Soviet Union in 1953. Leo Demidov, former military officer (played by Tom Hardy), who had worked in MGB (the new name for the NKVD in late Stalin’s reign), survived the Holodomor in Ukraine, and raised the victory flag in Berlin, was exiled to work in the provincial city of Volsk because he refused to sentence his own wife to the labor camps. That was the place in which he tried to investigate the case of a serial murderer, who had killed 44 children. His authorities fiercely oppose the investigation, because premeditated murders and serial killers are characteristic of capitalism. As a result of this, Demidov-Hardy not only pursues the monster by himself, but has to save himself from his MGB colleagues. The movie also stars Gary Oldman, Vincent Cassel, and Charles Dance (of Tywin Lannister from the Game of Thrones fame).
Judging both from the plot and the critical reception, Child 44 is a poorly acted telltale of the “Cranberry tree” style, which fails to reflect the realities of the USSR properly. The film has received mostly negative reviews in the western press. Nevertheless, the statement above never says a word about the artistic level – but the 70th anniversary of the Victory is mentioned. Probably, the film was banned on the grounds of the portrayal of Soviet soldiers in one episode of 1945 Berlin, which was far from favorable – but the main reason, apparently, were the words of Tom Rob Smith, who had said that “Soviet Russia, a terrifying mixture of horror and absurd” is one of the main novel’s characters. The course for laundering Soviet reality in its worst, Stalinist, fashion, adopted by Putin, makes it impossible to broadcast such film in Russia regardless of their quality.
Anyway, the pros and cons of Child 44 can only be guessed by Ukrainians as well. As it turned out, the citizens of independent Ukraine, having gone through two revolutions and 24 years of sovereignty, are not able to see the film, which was banned in another, not so friendly state – because Multi Media Distribution, a Ukrainian movie rental company that was about to release Child 44 in Ukraine, has contractual obligations to their Russian colleagues, which do not allow to broadcast the film on our own.
Roman MARTYNENKO, Multi Media Distribution director, has commented the situation to The Day:
“Central Partnership indeed has a broadcast license on the CIS territory, including Ukraine, that’s why we are now forced to cancel the show. It is not happening for the first time. Unfortunately, we are not working with western studios directly, thus working with Russian distributors is all we are left with. The reasons are purely commercial, as Ukrainian market is not competitive enough: small number of movie theaters, unstable national currency, the low average price for tickets (our price is two dollars, whereas in Russia it’s five). Certainly, the ban so far has achieved the opposite results – Child 44 now is the center of attention. In any case, it is an unfortunate situation to have. We will be working on this to avoid similar situations in the future.
“Yes, we have all been through this sort of hackneyed situations before. For more than two decades Russian companies on their own accord have been cancelling the movie rental in Ukraine or limiting the quality of the rental, providing tapes in inferior formats, which are suitable only for small movie halls and small screens (and this is none other than a cheap mockery). At the same time, the bureaucrats from the Ministry of Culture, as well as all of our cinema industry officials, are busy with other things: for example, they seriously consider imposing a fare on each ticket in order to support national films. But from what this fare would be paid, when we are unable to control which movies to show in the theaters?
“There is always a way out. Let’s remember how we managed to break the Russian monopoly on dubbing (by the way, the Russian dubbing has always been very artificial, with the pathos and aspiration of a low-class theater) – at that time there were many talks on the unprofitability of a mandatory dubbing in Ukrainian, but foreign movies started speaking our state language and the movie rental industry still stands. It seems that in regard of the movie rental rights, the situation might be solved with what opportunities we have. The most important thing is to have the political will for such a decision – otherwise, business people from Moscow will still get to decide what and how we watch.”
We have also asked for a comment from a person with vast experience in this industry – Liudmyla HORDELADZE, Zhovten cinema director:
“In fact, not all Ukrainian distributors find themselves in such a position: big companies work with the western partners directly. But the distributors which are less powerful, independent – they are indeed forced to work with Russian intermediation. It’s all about money, of course. The rights concession itself (which allows for rental in theaters, TV, and Internet) is very expensive – about 30,000 dollars, which have to be paid in advance. So, working with Russians is a lot easier and cheaper. Unfortunately, on the map of the Western movie industry, Ukraine is a territory, not a separate country.
“Perhaps this unpleasant situation will come as a turning point, because we cannot allow for this to continue. One plausible way out might be the increase in the number of cinema halls, but for that we will need a state program for the distribution network development.”
